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Tag Archives: podisiri

Client: stichting Uitracel / district Saramacca, Surinam Year: 2013
Output: Public Space Strategy / Local Economic Dev. Strategy / Resource MobilisationProject: Creola Bright Future aims at the exploration of cultural value through the lens of public space in the former slave plantation of Creola, Surinam. Creola is a former slave plantation that has been erected in 1934 and thus exists 80 year in 2014. Inhabitants in the area and in the surroundings are descendants of the slaves of this plantation. The local community of Creola has a dual relation to the plantation having been unvoluntary offspring of this dark side of Surinam’s history. At the same time local inhabitants have developed local arts and crafts, regional architecture and agricultural production of indigenous food on the site of the former plantation. This all creates a accidental assemblage of historic landscape architectonic artefacts like sluices and waterways with hidden podisiri (acai berry’s) plantations , regional architecture and local crafts on the production of for example Korjalen, the typical Surinam boat type. Locals living in the area all have their own stories and knowledge on what has happened over history on the plantation.

This project will amplify local cultural values in the area and relate them to the experience of the area itself in order to rebuild a local identity for Creola. This together should provide a network of public spaces that offer opportunities for small entrepreneurial activities. The project develops an alternative public space strategy as opposed to the tabula rasa development that is common these days in the privatized society of Surinam. By exploring local stories and cultural production in the area CreolaBrightFuture rewrites the story of Creola people throught the experience of public space. Not as a historical analysis but as a basis for contemporary cultural production, education and small entrepreneurship.
Sources: SmartCityStudio Picture: Local Podisiri (acai berry’s) plantation hidden in the woods of Creola.